


The Swan Wife

by butforthegrace



Category: Fairy Tales and Related Fandoms
Genre: F/M, Identity, Revisionist Fairy Tale, Shapeshifting, Theft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-16
Updated: 2011-08-16
Packaged: 2017-10-22 16:16:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/239988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/butforthegrace/pseuds/butforthegrace
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He takes her feathers and leaves her with nothing but a name that is not hers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Swan Wife

When he asks her name, she does not know how to answer.

There is no way to vocalize the name the air gave her, not with this human throat and mouth; she is unpracticed in the ways of humanity, and certainly she is reluctant to give her name to someone who is not like her, is not a swan.

So instead she runs, bare human feet pounding on the sand, snatches up her feathers from where they lay next to her sisters', and flies away. Her sisters don't take long to follow, but they ask her why she was in such a hurry to go.

She does not tell them of the human boy who waited for her in the trees, hunger on his face and a name that she doesn't want to know on his lips.

 

 

They return the next week, on a different day. She prays he will not be there.

The hour is late; the clouds' lifeblood leaks out into the sky. The sun is almost set, and to the east the sky is the dusky blue of her own eyes.

She and her sisters land on the white sand of the sound; they shed their feathers, and toss them into the grass. Where once three swans had perched, three maidens stand, and go to the water to play.

She looks around before she follows her sisters into the deep; she sees the boy nowhere, and hopes that she will return home without the taint of human in her eyes.

So the swan maidens frolic; they splash around and swim and laugh, and she forgets the boy for a time, until the sun has fully set and they emerge from the dark water onto the dark land to find their feathers.

Her sisters each pluck their feathers from the grass and fly away, expecting her to follow, but she can't find hers; she'd thought they would be just next to her sisters', but they're not, there's no gleam of white among the grey grass and _where are her feathers?_ The panic is building in her, bubbling up as she searches frantically for her skin, feeling more vulnerably naked than she ever has before. Her fingers claw the sand, finding nothing but shells and roots.

A horrible foreboding leads her to the trees where she saw the human boy before. Her heart pounds as she slowly walks past the first dark trunk, and there are moving shadows all around her and she doesn't think she's ever been so  _terrified_ and--

“Are you looking for this?”

She looks north and there he is, his ashy hair curling around his face, her feathers grasped in his hand. She runs forward without thinking, panic seizing her, but he just steps aside as she reaches out for her skin.

The swan maiden looks at him then,  _really_ looks, at his cruel sharp face and his eyes like chips of stone, and she falls to her knees and begs. Her human language is rusty with disuse, but tears fall from her eyes; she has to use what weapons she can to win back her skin.

“Please,” she begs him, looking up at his cold eyes, “please, give me back my feathers, they're not yours, please, _please_.” Inside she is not so desperate; she is _angry_. How _dare_ he? They are not his! The feathers are hers, they are her skin, they are _her_ ; what right does a mere human boy have to separate herself from herself?

But he does not answer her prayers. He does not give them back. Instead he hides them inside a sack, and casts another cloak about her shoulders instead. She throws it off and tries to run, far from the boy who has stolen her skin, but she does not get far before she feels like she is being split in two. The pain is unbearable, like someone is snapping all her bones inside her. She understands then: she cannot run. Not from herself.

 

 

He names her Siv.

 

 

Someone else tells her, later, much later, after she has born him a child with soft white hair and eyes of blue stone, that “Siv” means bride. It means wife.

 

 

She pretends to live with him contentedly. She becomes more fluent in his human tongue. After he does not stop striking her, she stops looking at the sky. She cooks him meals and mends his clothes and cares for his daughter, and she does not speak of flying; she does not speak of the time when she was a swan maiden, rather than just a maiden. She learns to answer “Siv” when others ask her name, but it does not come naturally to her tongue.

After a while, she gives up searching for her feathers.

 

 

When they have been married seven years—when it has, in fact, been seven years to the day that he stole her skin—they are sitting at the table together as the sun goes down, talking. He drinks. He drinks more. She refills his cup whenever he empties it.

And he tells her he has something to show her.

She follows him into their bedroom as he boasts that he has something to show her. As she watches, he lies on his belly next to their bed, and pulls away part of the floor. In the crevice underneath, dirtied and dusty, are her feathers.

He takes them up and slides back out to where she stands, incredulous, wondering how she never found them before. “See,” he says, smiling drunkenly, dangling them in front of her, “I  _hid_ 'em. I hid them  _good_ . You never--”

But before he can finish the sentence she has snatched them from his ale-loosened hands, and she pulls her skin back on before his disbelieving eyes.

The window is open.

She flies out.

She leaves her husband staring after her, shouting out the window as she flies away, herself once more; she hears distant cries of him screaming for a swan to be shot, but no one shoots. She goes, quick, leaving behind her husband and his daughter, soaring through the dark sky to finally find home.

 

 

He dies a year and a day later. She returns to the village for his funeral, watching in her swan skin.

She does not mourn.


End file.
